 to start the record of the session. And the contributors, the presenters, our speakers of today's online panel. So I'm very happy to welcome you in European Distance Learning Week. Speak. Organize. Organize. I can see some echoes. I can see some echoes when some of you who don't speak now mute your microphone. Thank you. Today, we have online panel discussion dedicated to discuss European achievements and innovations and to answer the question, why and if we need European Distance Learning Week. This webinar will be recorded. And the record will be published at the Weeks website. And you can see the link. And most probably, you already got information that every day we will have at least one European event. At Tuesday, we'll be dedicated to discuss quality in open online and technology-enhanced learning. Wednesday, we'll be dedicated to discuss open education involving issues like beyond MOOCs. Thursday, we'll be dedicated to validation and recognition of non-formal open learning. And Friday, the digital skills and teaching and learning are we on the right track? The question will be posed. However, every day, we will have the same room for the European Distance Learning Week. But we have other contributing events. We also participate in the USDLA, European United States Distance Learning Association Week. And also, we have contributors from Germany. And today, we will hear more about events and national associations. So this week will be very exciting for all of us. So now, let me please focus on today's online panel. My name is Aydana. I'm Aydana Volingavichin, the president of the European Distance Learning Network. And we have panel speakers with late apologies. We have some of them who were not able to join. However, we have the majority joining in. Our very special guest and honorary participants. So here you see the list. But I will invite one by one each of you just shortly to present yourself. And I'm happy to invite now two ladies. And maybe starting with Sharon Goshten from USDLA. Sharon, please. Hey, I'm very good morning in the US. It's very exciting to be part of this. I couldn't do this without Marcy Powell, also from USDLA. Thank you, Marcy, and us to participate in this very, very exciting inaugural week. I work at Berkeley College. I'm a campus operating officer for Berkeley's online campus. And I'm also honored to be a board member of the USDLA. Thank you. Thank you, Sharon. Hello, everyone. I'm Marcy Powell. I'm chair of Merida and past president of the United States Distance Learning Association. And I currently serve as the chair over our global partnerships, which includes our relationship with Eden, which we're so blessed to have. I serve currently as an educational consultant and then work as the volunteer with USDLA and other associations. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Marcy. Now, we had an excuse from Dennis and Brian. And I would like to ask Brickena to test your mic. Hello, everyone. Do you hear me? Yeah, OK. Hello, everyone. I'm Brickena. I'm the director of the Lifelong Learning Platform. I joined the organization recently in July. But I've been taking this very challenge task to represent 40 umbrella organizations at European level, where Eden is also one of the members. And we promote, of course, Lifelong Learning and Education. And we try to bring together different sectors of education, formal, non-formal, and informal education together. And I'm honored to be here. So thank you very much for the opportunity. I hope I can contribute to the discussion. Thanks a lot, Brickena. Yes, hello, everybody. And I'm also very, very happy and honored to be here. Thank you very much for the invite and the opportunity. I'm a program manager at Hochschulform Digitalisierung, which is a government-sponsored German think tank dealing with higher education of the 21st century, basically. So we try to develop solutions, ideas of how universities can, well, effectively fulfill their purposes in the 21st century. And of course, all these topics about open learning, online learning, blended learning, all these things are crucial to what we do. We work with a lot of experts. We organize conferences. For instance, on the 1st of December, we have our big final conference for this year. So yeah, there's lots that we do in this future. Thank you very much, Tarkovsky. Hello, my name is Alek Tarkovsky. I am the director of Sentencing to the Robert Digital Center. We're a Polish think and do tank based in Warsaw. We focus our work on all things open and our particular areas of interest are education, that's our involvement here and also heritage and science. And I'm very happy to be able to speak. Thank you, Irina, for the invitation. We consider even an important partner. I also work very closely for Creative Commons, where the European Policy Advisor and this Creative Commons that we try to work in Europe on improving open educational policies. And finally, I would like to mention if I organize this year and we'll organize again next week, which is the OER Policy Forum, which is a European event that brings together people debating these issues. Thank you very much. And now, I'd like to say a... I'm Lisa Marie Blaszka. Hello, everyone. Great to have you here today. I am on the board of directors for Eden and vice president and work at the University of Oldenburg as a program director for the Master of Disease Education e-learning program, where I also teach. And, yeah, that's in the center of life long, Center for Life Long Learning at the University of Oldenburg. And I'm looking forward to engaging with everyone today. Thanks, Lisa. And our final panel speaker is Vim Montitigan, who is not able to talk because he is in another event as well. But he will follow us in the chat. Vim is vice president of Eden and he comes from Catholic University of Oldenburg. Actually, we have participants, 24 participants currently joining in. We don't have affiliations and the representations for the majority of them. I can recognize some people. I can recognize students. I can recognize teachers, colleagues, professional mates. But we are very happy that we find the time and place to meet specifically under this initiative. But I think it's time when we should somehow bring synergies, more and more synergies of all that we are doing in our organization so that we can discuss these things online, face-to-face and different opportunities. So today we will go through the five major questions that were announced already on the web for this event. However, all the participants were invited actually with specific attention to the great contributions that can already be identified on European landscape on what you are doing as the leaders in digitalization in opening up education and the application of ICT in Europe and behind. But we have two honorable guests from the U.S., which is Sharon and Marcy. And actually, the first question that I would like to ask and I would like to ask now our technical people to move our discussion to discussion format and to allow us to see each other better and to ask participants to post any comments, feedback, questions in the chat option and we will continue this way. So first of all, I would like to ask Marcy to tell us more about the origins, the history of this initiative that we know for some people in Sweden. But thank you, Irina. So about 10 years ago, U.S. DLA decided that we really wanted a week dedicated to National Distance Learning Week in order to do something like that and make it national. You have to get a Senator or Congressman to back you and they bring forth a resolution to our Congress and then the Congress can vote. Fortunately for us, Senator Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts was willing to take it forth for us and we had the week, the second week of November declared as our National Distance Learning Week. That first year I was serving as President-elect for U.S. DLA and my colleague Reggie Smith who was also on the board and then Ken Hartman from Drexel University partnered together to help design the lineup for the week and it was a lot of work because it was so new and it was just born. So we reached out to our board members, to our membership and across the institutions that belong to U.S. DLA and we were able to come up with a very solid lineup that addressed all of the markets that U.S. DLA represents which include K-12 our primary secondary education, higher education, government, healthcare and corporate. And so we were able to reach all of those markets and be able to offer, show how distance learning has really become so mainstream across the United States through all types of associations and organizations institutions. Through the years it's grown dramatically to the point that now many of our institutions and Sharon can share about what they do at Berkeley College and what's on the lineup but it's gone across where many institutions across the U.S. do their own and sign up with, you can see a list of a lot of the ones that are going on and those include organizations like Drexel, Pearson, a company, Pearson and even NASA. Last year, two years ago, Sharon and I had the blessing of being at the Eden Conference in Barcelona and we've had a wonderful partnership relationship with Eden. So we brought to the officers of the Eden Board the idea of participating in our National Distance Learning Week as an international partner. And very fortunately we were able to do that with Eden and we had some wonderful events throughout the week that brought global attention to how greatly distance learning has spread throughout the world. So then this year or last year we were speaking about making, having the development of an Eden, well excuse me, a European Distance Learning Week which I can't speak to as well as Irina and others that were involved in that but we were very excited to see that this collaboration has grown like it has. Exactly Marci, I can witness to you that actually European organizations but also national initiatives picked up the possibility to contribute to join with such enthusiasm that it can hardly be added on, it just goes on its own. So thank you very much, we just are very happy to transfer this very good idea and initiative that you established. Sharon, please, maybe you can also share with us. Quite a bit of traction in the US and it's something that we look forward to every year and we can see with the other national organizations that are focused on distance education, we too have jumped on the band, and really mark NDLW as an event to be noted. So I'll press the link here, Berkeley College where I work, we're very, very involved in distance learning, are very committed to it and we have a number of events that celebrate and acknowledge this week, one of them being our distance learning symposium where we invite all our online faculty for a day of professional development and this we're seeing is quality in online education and quality of course has no borders because I see that that's on your degree agenda as well. It's something that we're very focused on to make sure that our students are receiving the best possible learning outcomes and learning platforms and experience that they can have. And so we focus on components of NDLW online learning with our faculty and we also have some fun with it as well. At Berkeley College, we have what we call our art and creativity festival and it's an online opportunity for our students, staff and faculty to share their creativity online in showcasing various things such as their sculptures, their paintings, poetry, having to categorize your virtual reality which we are really focusing on here at Berkeley and trying to bring that technology into our class and focus site and online. And so we also are working with one of our sponsors, Georama. They are a virtual platform, a video platform company where they take us around the world with the highest levels of technology and interact with chat capabilities. Berkeley and Georama have partnered. Georama is also a sponsor of USBLA and so it all in your bingles. And Marcy had mentioned RETCO and there's other institutions again that we all come in and collaborate together. So it's really exciting and you can see on our list of activities, the Georama Tour of Sorrento, Italy. So they'll be walking us through the lovely species Sorrento, our participants will have the opportunity to chat with the tour guide, ask questions and this is an awful lot of fun when you've done this before. So all in all, this is a busy plan for all year. Marcy and I could not be more thrilled when we found out that we got this email from you and we know that this was in fact going to go ahead with your team, this is learning, was thrilled to be part of it and we wish you great success this year and years going forward. We know you'll have it. Thank you. Thank you very much, Sharon. It was great experience for us, but now I see that we are, this year we are discussing actually what we would like to see as European Distance Learning Week. Also we have been discussing a lot the concept whether it is distance learning, but in even we have our pre-ecidus, our, you know, ghouls who have discussed this concept and actually they come back again to distance learning concept after different, different interpretations and ideas. And now I would like to invite one by one other panel speakers inspired by Sharon's latest comments maybe to consider what and how would you imagine European Distance Learning Week in terms of innovations in Europe in the area of open distance and e-learning activities that have been dominating in the last 10 years. Maybe we can cover this aspect in the question and how do you think, how you would envision this week and how you would suggest development? Sorry, I'm putting the mic on. Okay, so for, of course for us, we don't necessarily focus on distance learning in particular, although we do have a position when it comes to digital learning in general. And what I will say that from our perspective is of course to make sure that people have the basic digital skills to access those opportunities. And I think this is a step back before actually we promote distance learning that we also promote the development of basic skills to use those technologies and to use these opportunities. So I think it's important for us as well to take into consideration this, that we provide those basic skills of using. But also there is another dimension that we believe in digital learning or distance learning should also focus on which is the learner centered. So I think it is important in the development of these tools to take into consideration how this distance learning can actually be more learner centered than any type of other education or other type of learning. So I think this is an added value that the distance learning have and we can foster that further. And of course the self direction that this type of learning can have. But however, another barrier that I think it's also important to take into consideration is also the recognition. How this form of learning is recognized and how it integrates to the general curricula. I think there is a lot still to be done especially in Europe. Although we see now developing this type of learning more and more, we still have to face some very practical challenges which come with the recognition of this learning and how it's integrated in the general curricula. So yeah, from our side, it's very much about overcoming those barriers. We don't have as such ourselves developed any position in particular when it comes to distance learning but we try to first overcome those barriers. So from our side, that will be a first answer to your question. And I can maybe elaborate further more as we go in the discussion if the other speakers have maybe another point of view from which they tackle this form of learning. Thank you very much, Burkina. Let's move maybe now to Germany and Sebastian, how you would see the need for European distance learning week. How you would interpret this context? Well, first and foremost, we have to say that the educational landscapes all over Europe, the landscapes are highly diverse. We have countries which are very, very government centered such as Germany, Scandinavian countries where we have say more traditional models of at least higher education. And we have other countries which say are more innovative and more flexible. So it's really hard to really talk about Europe as a whole. I think the first thing is always to look at what challenges do we want to solve if we talk about online learning, if we talk about distance learning, the first question, I mean, like online learning is not an end in itself, obviously. It always solves certain things and there are a lot of challenges that distance learning or that online learning can solve, which is of course questions of flexibility, geographical and time flexibility. But they can, in idea case, also solve pedagogic questions. And I agree very much with the pin on that because you mentioned that as well when you were just talking that these are very central questions. And if you asked about the changes within the last 10 years, I mean, we obviously had the MOOC revolution or so it was titled at the time, which didn't turn out to be exactly a revolution which turned out to help some students tremendously to that did not help a large majority of students, it did not turn out that MOOCs could be a model like that could be used in the mainstream for everybody. The reason being that, I mean, in my opinion, the main reason being that we cannot just take the pedagogy that is used in case-to-case learning and you transfer it to online learning. It just doesn't work, it just motivates people. And so the question is how do you motivate the people? How do you make up for the lack of seeing someone in person because this has tremendous effect on learning, as we know. So I think these are questions that have been evolving over time and these are questions that are now, in my opinion, like very central to the discussion. Thank you very much, it's very, very relevant. And of course, the field is very broad. I would like to ask Alec to focus on the opening, I appreciate it. Yes, thank you. So some general comments. First of all, we should all remember, we're all probably aware of it, that the open approach to education, the concept of open education is relatively young and it can be sort of seen as a younger sibling of I think more mature movements or approaches with a lot longer history, like the concept of distance learning or even e-learning. And that has a certain advantage, we can see openness as a certain fresh and innovative approach, but also I think within open we need to remember that some of the things we're working on have been already approached successfully even by earlier approaches. That's one point worth making, so we sort of, but I think the most important thing that at least is happening in my opinion and from this perspective open and on which I try to actively work is to see openness very closely related to for instance, such approaches as distance learning and I don't think that's always the case. I think open education has its own agenda, which is for instance, very resource focused and these resources shoes are not solved yet, we're far from solving them. But what I think is becoming more and more clear is that as long as open education stays only at this level of resources, we will not get far in terms of real educational change. In order to be successful, we need to sort of couple these resource issues which are very significant, they can lead to significant cost savings, they can lead to significant increases in effectiveness of education, quality of education that only if we think about use and the moment we start thinking use, we realize that for instance, distance learning in the shape of all sorts of online courses is a sort of great space for synergy, between resources that can maybe be more freely shared but they're sort of dormant without the good model for using them. So this is something I think we should be focusing on and I'm happy, this is a nice for instance, opportunity to show this mixed perspective. Maybe I should say just a little bit. Thank you very much. I thought I should maybe say a bit about the situation here, but I can do it in a later comment. I would like to, okay thank you because I wasn't on echo. I still would like to completely explore item two. I like to have a microphone on, no? Okay. Question two, I think is very relevant what we mentioned, we mentioned open educational involving them in MOOCs, but do we have any other initiatives that we would like to mention here as well? And maybe Lisa, what is your perspective here and the concept in mind in regards to what has been mentioned in this? Yeah, no, I was having trouble getting the microphone on, apologies. I think what was said already, I think Sebastian's point was highly relevant and when he was talking about the context that we're all dealing with here within Europe, there is not one single context and so there can't be one single solution for distance learning. And so I think something like this, the European distance learning week gives us an opportunity to collaborate and to share best practices and to find opportunities to work together on future initiatives. And I also think when I think about how things have changed in Europe over the last 10 years, I think one of the biggest things at least from my perspective here, I'm also in Germany, is the demographics. And this kind of ties in with a lot of the topics that people have already addressed today in the opening statements. And that is that we're no longer dealing with students going through the normal channels, that they're just, you know, they're going to grade school, high school and then university, but we're really looking at lifelong learning. And I think the coming together of a number of events, the advancement of technology, the need for new pedagogies, I think all of those things have erupted or have become important because of the fact that our demographics and the needs of our learners are changing. And so I think, you know, what was also mentioned, you know, Burkana had mentioned the need for new pedagogies. We need to find new ways to address teaching and learning for the new technologies and to address the needs of the learners of different demographics. And I think all of the topics that we've discussed here are really relevant to doing that, in particular the open education movement. So I see this week and not just this week, but other, you know, in the future opportunities for us to work together to collaborate, share our experiences and also to share, you know, our best practices so that we can really find solutions to some of these problems. Thank you, Liza. I tried to put the notes and I know that presenters have the right for note-taking. However, participants don't. So please don't hesitate to use chat options to post any feedback, any comments, ideas here and don't be passive, be active. And I see that actually them posted in the chat coming from a traditional university I would like to bring in the notion of blended learning in the discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much. We will maybe elaborate on this also with the next item. If you also have some insights that would be important, please put them in the chat as well. So now maybe we can move on and try to focus on two things. One thing, what actually strength or positive experiences you would be willing to mention? I would invite both from the US and from Europe in the area of open and distance and belonging. So what went right? And then we will focus on what needs to be improved. Okay, so let's do around again and what would you like to mention? I would be glad to, Irina. So much comes to mind because distance learning and blended learning them have grown so tremendously throughout the world. And when I look at the innovative things that are happening, all the technologies that are being integrated, Lisa Marie as you said and the new pedagogies and the different approaches for teaching and learning. When you look at holography, augmented reality, virtual reality, gamification, University of Limerick for example has a really neat game that they've designed in teaching prediction markets. So when you look at the unique way of approaching taking all the technologies that are highly innovative and very engaging for all students, I'm very impressed with some of the things that are going on across the US and across Europe throughout the world. I love what University of Hull is doing with Minecraft and figuring out how that can help teach mathematics to primary secondary students in very engaging ways. So using what students love and then using it to really grow what they're going to do. When it comes to MOOCs, I would say that MOOCs are still very strong in the US. I see them very strong in Europe when I look at future learning, what they've done with their platform and who's joining. I find it interesting, one of our colleagues, Irina Debra, senior moment, last name, from University of Burgundy when they did their MOOC on going from great to glass in the learning of how to make wine. One person socially tweeted it on social media, tweeted it to Wine Spectators, which is a US magazine, very famous magazine. And they immediately had over 25,000 people sign up for the MOOC. I thought that was an interesting way of really showing what we can do. And what I've seen with MOOCs that are happening, like you look at Georgia Tech and I'll close with this one because I know others have things to share. Georgia Tech took the MOOC's style and they did a very innovative approach by saying, let's offer computer science, a masters in computer science for only $6,000, which is unheard of in the United States. That would be a 25,000 plus degree. And they offered it worldwide. Some of their very first graduates were from China and other places. And they found a way, the learners found a way to engage and to form their own collaborative groups and their own face to face. They used video for the instructors and then made sure the instructors that they had access. But the concept was how can we increase and make this more accessible. And that's a point we haven't talked about yet is accessibility and how important that plays a role. So they made this degree plan more accessible and they had had over 8,000 people enroll in the program, something they could not have done with their bricks and mortar institution to manage that many students wanting to get that degree. And so I'll leave it with that on some of the innovative ways we have approaching distance learning throughout the world. Thank you very much, Marcy. It's very interesting. We always want to, you know, these kick-offs. And so here at Berkeley, I did analytics with our students. We just implemented that within the past actually two, three weeks. So I'm still involved in learning it. In fact, right after this webinar today, I had another training session on it. But we're really excited because it's giving us really good information as we look at the students' learning online and where they're focusing and what their success predictors and so forth are so that we can develop initiative to really target those students. And to the issue of blended learning, through the predictive and analytics, we have found that our students have the highest degree of completion when they are blended, rather than all online or all on site. And so we're working for distance. So this is something that we just cannot ignore. Also the idea of adaptive learning and learning at the student's own pace and style is really important, again, to the success of the online learner. And no longer can the model sustainable where everybody learns exactly the same way, especially online. We are now, we can now move to, and we'll text book some of you or ebook platforms with our publishers and so forth. And the technology that they are building into that interactiveness is really wonderful and leads to wonderful learning opportunities. As you know, there's probably not a week that goes by that some vendor or some publisher or some innovator isn't coming up with a new method. And it's just very exciting to try to keep up with it, knowing that the future is just so positive. And it's just not standing up and lecturing and maybe seeming built and really excited to keep exploring these options. Thank you. Thank you, Sharon. Now let's move to European experience. And I would like to ask now each of you to get feedback on what you see as the best experience, something positive, what happened? Well, thank you very much. What to be fair, I think that Germany is not exactly on the forefront when it comes to innovative distance online learning or use of technologies there. There's a lot happening right now. We have the situation where the political will to invest significant amounts of money into this issue is forming quite rapidly right now. So I think we'll see a lot of change there. But to be fair, when I was South America, I was in Ireland for a few weeks and I visited some universities there, our Galway, several Dublin universities and I was impressed, I was actually blown away by what they're doing as compared to what we do. So when it comes to what happened positively, I mean, well, in Germany within the last 10 years, we doubled the amount of people who do distance learning courses at universities. This, so obviously something went well there. You don't double the numbers. There's not something positive happening. But to be fair, I'm sure that actually, Alec and Brekena will be more able to actually talk about very positive examples. I would say in Germany, there are clearly positive examples. There are some universities that make very creative use of the new possibilities for technology. There's gonna be bigger universities such as Aachen, which is the most prestigious engineering school in Germany. We do amazing things, amazing blended learning, amazing use of blended learning technology. Some smaller universities that outside Germany nobody's ever heard of, which is like University of Applied Science, Lütec, which is really unknown outside Germany that does amazing stuff. Oldenburg obviously is on the forefront when it comes to online learning. But I think as a whole, there are other countries that make much better use in general. I would say that we're slowly starting to see some of them happen, but not enough. And probably the challenges as already has been mentioned, for instance, by Sebastian is sort of the natural decentralization and distribution in Europe. We have many languages, we have many educational systems with higher education and in primary and secondary. And this leads all two challenges. And I think that is the reason we don't yet see such impressive growth of open models, as we now see in the US, for instance, in the college space, we can only dream of such success. We've had in the last several years some success with sort of basic policy shaping. So certainly an important move was the opening up, open education, opening up education, communication by the commission, which set some groundwork for seeing this as an important issue. And probably the most important practical development that came out of it is that the IPTS, the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies in Seville, which is part of the joint research center of the commission has been conducting quite significant sort of research and also policy work on open education. And an interesting recent, I think very important development was the development of the open educational framework, which is sort of a framework that can be used by higher education institutions to sort of define the role of open education models and tools within broader educational strategy. And hopefully this will lead us to more of a mainstreaming of this approach, because for now I think open education in higher ed and it's quite the same in primary and secondary as sort of results of actions of single universities. We don't see, for instance, and I would like to see more developments around some sort of repositories. It's a bit curious. We have very strong open access repository models. One would think it would be relatively easy to build on them in higher education even more easily than at school level, but we're not seeing this yet. So I would say we're doing quite good with the policy. I should also mention that the Rasmus Plus program, the really big funding program, has an open licensing requirement. Again, it could be a bit stronger, but it's a good step forward. So the policies are slowly being in place. Now we should just focus on implementation and I think organizations need networks like Eden have here a really big role they can play. Brickena, from perspective of lifelong learning, do you have any positive comment? How actually, yeah, I will try to mention some of the positive, of course, initiatives. Generally, I just want to add to the discussion on how the situation in Europe, how it looks like. Of course, we see, as was said before, we are still developing the actual implementation of it, but there is a geographical discrepancy. So you have Western countries where universities, prestigious universities and also private universities have been developing those tools very successfully. And on the other side, we have Eastern and Southern Europeans that are still struggling with it. So we have a discrepancy in that development in Europe. However, what I wanted to maybe add as well as a positive feedback, of course, the fact that Lisa said before that distance learning or generally the online learning has opened up to opportunities for lifelong learning. So more people at any age, at any moment of their life can actually access those type of learning. And that's a very important development. And it is a major contribution to the lifelong learning approach. And also, of course, it enables the learners to adapt to their speed of learning and their path. So this is also a very positive thing. Another thing that maybe Alec mentioned, the Erasmus program is also supporting a lot these developments. And in particular, I will mention the virtual mobility program and the financing that are going to be given next year to develop the virtual mobility in Europe, which has also, of course, been one of the focus of the European Union to access mobility opportunities not only offline, as we have experienced a lot of Erasmus, a lot of students going abroad, a lot of young people going abroad for learning experience. Now, also this distance learning and then online learning has been used also to have this virtual mobility for those that cannot afford to travel abroad, cannot afford to stay abroad. So they are experiencing a kind of international experience staying at home and learning through those online classes. So I think that's a very positive development, which I think we, I mean, we are supporting and I think many of the providers or many of the universities are also trying to promote this more because we, of course, live in a very globalized and interconnected world. So international opponents and international skills are very, very much needed. So their way it comes with distance learning that it plays, it has its value. So, of course, they are very positive developments. Also, of course, the access in general has improved to people in maybe more remote areas, I will say. Of course, as I said before, we are far away from having that, having solved the accessibility issue to people with disabilities or people that actually are in a very deep remote areas where they barely have connection to internet and barely have connection or even devices to be able to access those learning opportunities. But I mean, certainly I can say that there are some positive developments. Most of our members from the different sectors of education are using those opportunities also for their staff trainings, for volunteer trainings, which is quite an amazing positive development as well. How actually this old-fashioned e-learning now developed more are used for volunteers to develop their skills while they do their experience in an association or in a different civil society organization. So there are many, many different ways. The different organizations are using these tools to develop skills of any type of learner, not only those that are within the formal education paths. So, yeah, I mean, I agree with Alec, a lot in terms of policy has been put in on the table, has been shared and politicians has committed to develop it farther, but we have to take care of the implementation and make sure are implemented in the way we want and that we ensure that democratic accessibility to those tools. So, yeah, I mean, this will be some of the positive feedback I will share at the moment. Thank you very much, Brickeli. I think we have a very nice... It's always fun being at the end of the line of questioning because everyone else has already identified all of the challenges and all of the best practices. So I just would like to touch on what the other panelists have brought up. Marcy and Sharon both talked about technology and the role of MOOCs and within Europe, I think future learn, open learn what the OUK is doing is really exciting stuff. There's so many changes as the new distance, as distance teaching universities try to reinvent themselves for the new environments that they find themselves in. And I think that, again, I can't mention enough the context that we're in within Europe. I mean, each of us, each of the panelists here from Europe have been speaking about their individual context. They've been talking about the different issues that they're confronted with, whether there's bandwidth, whether there's support for change and innovation within the school systems. I think the context really needs to be thought about. And again, I think through events like this where we can collaborate, share experiences, there's opportunities for us to really make some progress. Because Sebastian brought up University of Oldenburg, I'm going to mention it. As an American in Europe, I have to say, I would agree with the assessment that we're not as, I don't want to say as far as the United States, but we're more hesitant, I think, here in Europe. And we don't jump on the first bandwagon that comes along, not that the Americans do that. I don't want to say that. But we are a bit more cautious, especially when it comes to education. And so I think the approaches are a little bit different in that sense. And I also think from our perspective from University of Oldenburg, we offer a solution that uses the blended learning like Sharon was talking about earlier and has been very successful for our university at least within the Center for Lifelong Learning. And that is providing really a really basic, fundamental online system for students, working students to use, and then to have face-to-face workshops at intermittent points within the semester. We've gotten really positive feedback. There's been some great research that has emerged from it from our students. So really, I just, I know I'm emphasizing this again and again, but context really defines Europe and the solutions that we choose and the solutions that we design. Thank you very much, Liz. I think last week I was in India, in the Moscow ICT Forum and in comparison to other regions of the world, especially those far East and also South Africa and other like Saudi Arabia and others, I would say we are really strong in Europe in terms of the internet permeability into infrastructure connections. As it was correctly mentioned in policy development as well, what actually we might be overspeed it very soon is in best practices when people solve the problems, when they apply technology, whenever a problem exists, to solve it and mainstream it. So I think for our economy development and for our market development, it's very important that everyone understands how important actually is to recognize this achievement. And with the comments coming from Francisco Perez-Lostano from Universidad de Barcelona, I would go further on because it also raises challenges and as Francisco says, it's very important to match teaching with research to encourage teachers to make good practices. The lack of recognition of teachers compared to research hinders the development of the introduction of best practices in traditional universities. To me, it sounds like a warning, but from the heart. So actually talking about the innovations we need to mention the challenges and also something that would lead us to the biggest mistakes if we don't implement one or another policy in the right place and in the right time. And if quickly we would go around and mention the challenges, something that must be immediately implied and solved in our priority order. Okay, I was waiting to talk at the end. What do I see as major challenges? Well, I think, again, the context, I mean, how are we going to find solutions? Can we find solutions? Can we learn from each other? Are there opportunities for us to learn from each other, to learn from our experiences? I think a big challenge is just getting the support that we need to realize the many ventures that we're implementing support at different levels, at the institutional level, within our institutions, support at the policy level. And I'm sure that Alec can speak more to this. To really make these changes happen is a big challenge. And as I mentioned before, because of the context that we're in, each country has, and even within countries, each country has different challenges that they need to address. So I think for us in Europe, that will be our major challenges, is how do we address these different contexts and how do we find solutions that will meet the needs of our learners? Thank you, Lisa. I will read just Matthew's comment in the chat. I guess before we start to talk about implementation of new technology and learning formats, we have to think about what is necessary in the future so we will go to future questions in a moment. I was just turning on my mic. I hope you can hear me. So actually, the obvious step would be to work more on European policy, but I think that's a kind of boring answer. So a more interesting one, and I think fits well with priorities in Europe right now would be to work more on teacher training. We identified this in Poland doing a quite extensive sort of evaluation of the situation in open education. As a crucial issue, and this is also this attempt to look more broadly, you know, and we almost sometimes feel we would like to hold open in digital education or something like that. This is still a narrow field when you look at education as such. Still many people don't get it. So, of course, we can say there are a lot of challenges within infrastructure with policy, but it seems that at the lowest level, which is the crucial one, we're still at an issue of awareness raising and an understanding of basic issues. At the same time, such work can be very successfully run and not very heavily advertised open MOOC course for academics, and we had 300 people participating with around 60% retention rate. It's a really amazing result, which shows also that if you translated well into practical skills, educators really want to learn these things around copyright, around sharing resources, around finding resources. So, I would focus on that. And I think we're, EU is focusing a lot on digital skills, so this fits very well into the agenda. Like me or, because it was so loud, I couldn't hear you. I was asking you to comment. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you very much. I would like to pick up what Francisco said in this chat. I think that using digital tools in higher education well is mainly the question of good teaching. So, this really lies at the core of it. And the question of having a too low recognition of teaching at universities, this is clearly an issue in many European countries, including Germany. I was very positively surprised when I was in Galway, and they told me that at least on paper, they value at Galway University teaching and research are the same way that they're equal. Like in fact, they're not really equal, but at least on paper. In Germany, they're not even equal on paper. And I think that these are attitudes that you cannot change quickly, but they need to be changed. And how can you change them? You change them by, for instance, putting more resources into teaching. And this could be with much better support units, teaching support units at universities that support professors in making good use of technology and education, or just also just training them of how to do more constructive, active learning with their students. It's about how people get paid. It's too largely about, at least in Germany, how much money they can get from their research. So they're based to quite some degree linked to that. At least to some degree, linked pay for professors more to their teaching that would also have a lot. So it's about, these are changes that will come slowly, but I think they are crucial to have more and better online distance but also just on campus learning, better use of blended learning, for instance. I mean, this is blended learning that happens to a large degree on campus students as well. So I think it's really about recognition and putting more money into that and creating more units to help professors. Yeah, it's difficult to pick one, but I think what I said at the very beginning that these basic skills of knowing how to use those tools, it's necessary just to give you like one personal experience when I was a student many years ago. We tried to do a virtual class with people in different countries in Europe. I was based in France and we used Facebook as a tool to communicate and to share all the materials of the course. And at the time, Facebook was just about to, it was just the beginning in Europe and a lot of us didn't know how to use it and a lot of us mixed up what was private and what was educational and at the end, it was a very challenging experience. We learned a lot, of course, but we also messed up a lot in a way. So that's to say that I think it's very important to teach first the basic necessary skills on how to use those tools and how to make the best use, bearing in mind all the consequences it might have, the responsibilities, but also like accessibility issues. But if I have to pick one, another big thing that we should tackle at this issue is especially major for teachers. I really like the comment of one of the participants, I think Mattias Bartel, that says about how can we actually teach that it's about some skills about the future that we don't even know ourselves, how it would look like. And I totally agree. But in the short term, the problem we have to face is actually teach the teachers that got out of an old-fashioned system and then they didn't have those possibilities to actually learn basic skills and to learn how to use these technologies. So in the short term, we have to first train the teachers and I think that's very important because they play a crucial role. Even in what I said before, teachers play a crucial role in raising awareness and informing the kids about how to use those tools. But first of all, they are themselves, they need how to use it and make the best use out of them, not only to use it to change their teaching methods, but for themselves to train themselves to actually develop their skills and get trained regularly because their skills need to be developed very regularly and in a very fast way, more than it used to be before. So they need to access those tools as an opportunity for them to quite quickly develop their skills and train themselves and develop their competences. So yeah, for me, it's very important that we tackle this problem of teachers' training and teachers using these possibilities for both, one, to change the teaching and the learning experience, but also for themselves to train themselves and develop themselves. So that will be my one, if I have to, peak one. Thank you, Brikenna. I know that Annek needs to be in a moment. On a big scale, I would work to strengthen this legacy of a European policy that already includes an open education component and really take that seriously because I see, at least once, in terms of policy debate, this interest decrease a bit after two, three strong years. At a very practical level, one thing I can suggest in building on this in Poland, recently teachers at school level organized a fascinating all-day webinar which was a huge success. They just, you know, somehow people get excited by ideas like 12 hours of learning, which sounds a bit surprising, but they have over a thousand people participating constantly. So maybe a week is a nice format, but in our modern times, everything needs to be quicker, bigger, faster, so maybe at some point we should do just like a 24-hour global webinar with people around the world pitching with really fresh things they are doing and that would be my suggestion. And as I mentioned, I unfortunately have to leave now for another video, so thank you once again for the invitation. And goodbye. Thank you very much, Annek. Thank you very much. So now I think we have the final round with the final question that I already asked, Parlek. What would you see as the future of open distance and online learning? What would you see as your vision and what leaders would you see on European level, maybe the US, maybe global level, because Marcy and Sean can also say what is their point of view. But let's leave this question. I would be glad to. I think the future is very exciting. I believe the technologies have arrived and are continuing to be developed. When you look at learning analytics and the affordability of adaptive learning and the ways these technologies are going to allow us to meet the students where their needs lie and the fact that it will be like a smorgasbord or I've heard someone say a panorama of learning that's available for virtual students. So it's exciting to me to see that distance learning and open learning has come to the point of mainstream. We've been many of us on this call have been working towards this for 20 plus years and longer. The US DLA will celebrate its 30th anniversary next year. And so I was having a conversation just yesterday or day before yesterday with a young man who is nearly 30 and he's born since the US DLA was born. And to listen to him talk about how technologies have come about and how he's using them now as he teaches was really exciting. And so I think that the technologies have arrived the capabilities have arrived. I highly agree with everyone's comments towards teacher training and I hope to see that our governments the European Commission and others the EU, US all of us will fund towards that more intense teacher training because as all of us know we don't know what we don't know and some are scared to ask when they say I've heard of VR but what does that mean in teaching? And so to make those available is very exciting. So I think that future is going to be a smorgasbord or panorama of learning the adaptive learning technologies and the artificial intelligence will allow us to take whatever course we want when we want it. I think we'll continue to see a dramatic growth in competency based learning and the recognition of that with companies who will say I accept this badge, this certificate all of these different modalities we have to show that they are competent in what needed to be learned for that job. So it's exciting. I think we're going mainstream on steroids and I'll just leave it at that. Thank you, Irina. I'm actually not a teacher. I'm a campus operating officer for the College of Overseas to be administrative, mostly be administrative and operational and working with all parts to make it up there. But to Marcie's point we have emerging technologies and at first we are really committed to trying different ideas that we feel will enhance learning. And what we found are two things I'm going to echo what everyone has said. Teacher training is so critical because we can have the most wonderful technology but if the faculty are really not a guess at using these then in fact what's supposed to be a help is actually a hindrance in the classroom. So it is imperative that they be trained and the other side of that coin is that the faculty have to want to be trained and have to want to embrace it. And as our program grows we want to make sure that we maintain the quality of our program by utilizing faculty who really embrace it and are excited to embrace it. And I'll say it briefly we develop creative ways for our online students to access information be it in the classroom or co-correct your activities. We have a whole plethora of ways that we engage our students outside of the classroom using technology. And what we found, we've done it by necessity for our online students and our other campus locations in which there are eight have really jumped on and adopted some of those technologies for their on-site students. As Lisa has commented earlier we're talking about non-positional students. And even those who attend on-site are not the traditional model and they're there and they go to the classroom to read. And so for us to be able to offer our co-curricular program through these different technologies and platforms and provide our students a means to interact with us outside of the classroom beneficial not only for our population of online students but all in Berkeley College at all locations. And I would say that's true in learning across the US and in Europe as well. Learning goes way beyond the classroom. And it's just so exciting and that's why I love what I do. I know today they're the same there's something new around the corner and for those who are not afraid of change you embrace change. We're all in the right place right now. Thank you. Yes, thank you very much. I think Marcy and Sharon said a lot of things that I completely agree with as well. I think when we look at the future obviously high education or education itself is always involved in one future it's always a process there's always new things happening new needs coming. However, I think that I completely agree with Marcy when you say that the landscape is going to be multi-dimensional in the form of education providers on the one hand and on the other hand when it comes to the kind of degrees I think that when you mention badges I completely agree with that we'll see more micro degrees we'll see a richer landscape I do not see that the traditional degrees are going to disappear like Master PhD however we have a more diverse and more rich landscape and I think that especially when it comes to big international companies we already see it that they recognize non-traditional degrees more and more so multi-dimensional would be the first thing the second thing is accessibility and openness which I think are in the process of drastically increasing by catering more to non-traditional students Sharon you mentioned that this is happening universities have more non-traditional students they need to cater to them with the digital revolution we have the tools to provide education to them and I think this is a process that we are seeing right now and the process that will absolutely continue and the third thing I think that we will see more in the future which is already happening now is to have a more student centered education this has a lot to do with the pedagogy I think the whole question of digital raises the question of good pedagogy another time and I am using the word all the time because it is really German to say pedagogy I know that the word also works in English but this is really the German perspective I am bringing in here just this word and I think this is the third thing that we have more student focused more interactive more constructive thank you Sebastian very much yeah it's very difficult because I have to say Sebastian very well summarized everything and mentioned all of my points so well done so I don't have that much to add to it apart from saying that I agree that the future looks very exciting but also scary in a way because there is a lot of work to be done from all of us and to make sure that this development develops in the right way and I am very curious and I think all our organizations are very curious to see how this distance learning will actually revolutionize education but especially if it will have any influence in inclusive education in making education more inclusive so that's my one of the points I am very curious about the future and we will work for the next year on it we will try to come up with some work on the topic and see how actually this type of learning can make education more inclusive and this will be also the focus of the 2017 agenda on the EU level and digitalization being at the same time on the table I think combine these two it will be very interesting to see how this will actually get together so yeah I mean the future it's unpredictable we need to cooperate and I think one of the things that we have observed with this learning is that there has been more partnerships diverse partnerships of different stakeholders while the formal and the traditional education was only institutional institutional based this type of online education, online learning has developed a very diverse type of partnerships and I am very curious to also see in the future how this type of partnerships will contribute to the learning experience even more so bringing new access into the learning it's also a very interesting thing to be in mind so yeah that will be all and I really thank you Eddyn for organizing this week because I think it's very important to reflect and to raise awareness and I think this type of events are very useful thank you I think what I put and maybe you agree with me I put the term value based solutions because I heard some voice from you that we should be very accurate and actually think why I think we're confronted by a number of developments all of which have been brought up by the panelists today MOOCs, open education personal learning environments technology, these are events that are affecting not just teaching they're affecting us at all different levels, the micro the meso, the macro levels and in order for us to navigate these new environments or the future for that matter we're going to need leadership that is strong enough and is open enough to guide us through this path because it's not clear and what Matias mentioned in the comments you've got teachers that are not in favor of this any type of change is difficult it's challenging also for organizations such as for education just in general for policymakers and I think strong leadership will be absolutely necessary in order for us to realize the types of change that has been discussed here I think the the role of Eden in that landscape the work that we're doing on the project in helping to form policy I think is important but also the international collaborations such as the one with USDLA that had created this European distance learning European distance learning week switching it with the national distance learning week but I think there's lots of opportunities there but really we need to have leadership that is going to be supportive of these new pedagogies that is going to be open to this change and because there is so much change occurring so we'll need leaders that will be able to to help us navigate through that to the new environment Thank you very much Thank you very much Lisa I know Briganna wants to say goodbye and we all say goodbye in a moment but she needs to rush immediately so I would like to thank Thank you very much Briganna and if we go back now to our presentation mode I ask technical people to get back to presentation mode and I would like to say thank you big thank you to each of you once again to Sharon and Marcy joining us at I guess 5 in the morning or 6 in the morning from the US for all the experience for professionalism and transfer of your best practices to Europe in terms of national distance learning we will try in the future to keep it up synchronously with you so that we have contributions to each other's initiatives and make it global I also would like to thank Sebastian a lot for bringing German perspective I know that it is very important to discuss other areas but your perspective was very important I know Alec and Briganna left quickly but participated as long as possible of course even people Lisa and Wim as well but also participants who contributed actively in the chat especially I would mention Matthew as we have just a moment Francisco and then Liz and others who posted their comments they are very valuable insights and I just with the brief we mentioned that tomorrow at the same time we will have the next webinar at European distance until e-learning week other contributors are mentioned also at the website tomorrow we will have quality discussion thank you very much bye bye and if I might just make some advertising like right now I also put it in the chat there is a discussion going on co-organized by Hoekstra Forum Digiteers Yield by our think tank on digital higher education in the EU I posted the link if you want to join in it is going to be